


Hacked

by midgetnazgul



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:52:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midgetnazgul/pseuds/midgetnazgul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a prompt on the Mass Effect kinkmeme.</p><p>Original prompt: <i>The geth programs when they find out shep is in the system they taken advantage of him while he's inside the geth's world, they mine him for all he's worth. They've wanted to know organics for along time now here's one in their world! They exploit him ripping memories out, forcing sensations, creepy trauma stuff he eventually gets pulled out/disconnected from the system via Legion, Tali comforts her boyfriend. Looking for drama, love and comfort, and character development, connection, and bonding.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

          Shepard eyed the large tank with suspicion. The unknown had become the norm for him and all the members of the Normandy, but delving into a tube that was far too akin to the tank he’d pulled Grunt from to essentially download himself into the Consensus challenged even his very healthy sense of adventure. There was no lack of trust for Legion – Shepard would have given anyone else’s submission of the idea, Geth or no, a hearty “fuck that” and made off faster than a relay jump in the opposite direction.

          Unfortunately, beggars for diplomacy couldn’t be choosers. A fine mist rose from the chamber when Legion cued the glass visor open, just like in those old alien vids from the 20th marines in his N5 and -6 days would watch for laughs after Terminus missions.

          “Whenever you are ready, Shepard-Commander.”

          “Yeah,” he huffed with sarcastic mirth.

          “Shepard,” Tali tried, one last time. He met her eyes from over his shoulder and shook his head just slightly, enough to send a message without seeming like he was cutting her off callously. Her own shoulders dropped as a sign of surrender, but he did note her tightened grip around the handle of her shotgun. Garrus cleared his throat, but wisely stowed whatever smartass quip he had been preparing since Legion had put the plan forward. Lacking any other interruption to keep him from continuing, he dropped himself unceremoniously into the machine. It lacked any imitation of creature comfort – just brushed steel curving around his back, adding to the already claustrophobic ambiance.

          “All right, Legion. Let’s do this.”

          “Yes.”

          The actual downloading experience was, thankfully, far less dramatic and painful than his last virtual adventure while investigating Overlord, but the final destination was just as outright bizarre. Black and white and…blocky. Their mission proceeded easily enough, once Shepard’s bearings acclimated to their new surroundings. The Geth’s recording of history, however, sowed new and even greater doubt in his mind of the Quarian attempts to retake the homeworld, and Xen’s complete disregard of the AIs’ sapience. He and Tali were going to need a serious heart-to-heart about it before they finally raided Rannoch. Somewhere around the second data node, Legion began to fade in and out of static.

         “Legion?” His chest tightened at the absence of constant contact. The thought of losing his only tether to the world outside here was akin to, and magnitudes more terrifying than any zero-grav mission without mag boots and cabling.

         “We apologize. Geth are attempting to hack your terminal.”

         “The server?”

         “Yes, but we also specifically mean you. Being in the Consensus, organic or not, makes you just as part of it as Geth are, so you are subject to outside interference as well. Our data transfer nodes are at capacity deterring malicious software – we must remain on task. Continue as you have, we will provide more information only when necessary to save processing power.”

         “Got it.” At least, even during what was probably the number-one weirdest mission he’d ever encountered, everything had just as much predictability to go sideways as any other shoot-em-up planetside endeavor could. Cynical, perhaps, but also comforting. He relieved himself of his building stress by zapping more orange cubes, picturing each as an individual Reaper he’d personally thwarted as a cathartic exercise.

         It wasn’t until his way back his cynicism paid out. Legion had increasing difficulty in getting his instructions to Shepard clearly, and though the commander had picked up his pace as much as he could, the virus was gaining the upper hand and outwitting them just as fast as they managed to overcome its adaptations. Finishing the last data node took almost twice the time as the first two combined.

         “Our firewalls are close to breach, Shepard-Commander. We will open the transfer. You must hurry.”

         Shepard crouched a bit at the knees and holstered his “weapon” in preparation for a sprint to wherever Legion would end up pulling him back out again. Bits exploded abruptly from empty space a few dozen meters away, and floor panels began to paint a path before the entire space around him turned an angry red and sounded an alarm disturbingly similar to a Reaper’s growl.

         “Shepard-Commander, we a-” Legion began, but he was cut off by static. Shepard went to reach for the virus killer out of habit, but he never got the chance. Pain like a hot, iron spike at the base of his brain speared him, destroying any attempt at fighting back. Soon it was joined by a sensation Shepard could only ever describe as though his brain was being sucked out of his head through the smallest possible straw. Like an old vid, memories began flashing past his mind’s eye, first faster than he could comprehend before slowing down, as if being sorted.

         Finally, it stopped – on a memory he hadn’t relived, even in dreams, for years – Mindoir. Time, however, hadn’t dulled any of its razor edges. It started the same way it ever had, on a hill looking over a group of trees not far from his family’s prefab. Overcast sky darkened with the shadows of ships and began to echo with screams of the dying. He ran back towards the house, but again, as ever, it took an impossibly long time to get there. When he did, his father was there, battered assault rifle in hand, waving his son inside curtly. As he pelted through the threshold, his father’s hand grazed his forearm, and time slowed almost to a stop. With drell-like accuracy, Shepard could recall the pressure of his father’s fingers against the fabric of the shirt, the fear glittering in his eyes. Then, his mother stepped in his path, and he crashed into her arms – a last, desperate embrace.

         Sometimes, when he’d had this dream in the past, he was an adult in full armor, screaming soundlessly to his parents run, you can’t stop them, or he’d try to face down the Batarians himself and they’d just run through him, but this time he had reverted to the child he'd been that day. This particular incarnation of the memory heightened his helplessness and empathy to impossible peaks. What was left of his rational, present mind could sense the emotions being augmented, like someone was turning dials in the base of his skull.

         When the Batarians stormed the prefab and began shooting, he could feel his own terror amplified by his parents’ fatal wounds by some kind of hive-mind perspective. He, if he even still had a body, a self anymore – shrieked as merciless hooks of anguish tore at his shredded psyche. Before the memory could reach its resolution, when he’d stormed the intruders and annihilated them with his previously-unknown biotic skill, the vision was cut off in seeming disinterest.

         The swirling landscapes dropped him in yet another memory before he could take a proverbial breath. Pain, or the spiritual equivalent of it, still radiated thoughout his being as he gained his bearings. It was cold, and again he could hear the hum of sub-FTL engines resonating above him. Sounds of combat joined the din.

         Elysium.


	2. Chapter 2

          He wasn’t far from the command center where they had holed up during the Blitz. Every part of him strained against walking towards the stronghold, but he was urged forward anyway. Drifting through walls like a spirit, he arrived at the gates where he’d originally mustered thirty or so people to defend the sector where defenses had failed. Quickly, he realized he had not entered at the beginning of the memory; the scorch marks and rubble that riddled the ground were adorned with bodies of his hasty assemblage of what few soldiers and citizenry nearby that had been able to help. Most, if not all, depending on where he’d come in, were dead at this point. By the end of the Blitz, he hadn’t rested at all in nearly thirty hours, and half of those had been constant, grinding combat. He remembered little of the actual events of the day, but he did remember what he had been thinking and feeling. Anxiety pooled at the thought someone - or _thing_ \- was watching, that someone else would learn his one, true secret he’d guarded vehemently for over ten years.  
  
          The memory drove him on, presumably to find his younger self. When it did, Shepard was taken aback by the sight of himself. The injuries and filthiness he expected, but his eyes…fury emanated from him in tempestuous waves, originating from two blue circles lit with empty rage. No righteous indignation from the dead around him, or the steely resolve everyone talked about when they gossiped about the Commander and the Blitz…just pure, murderous ambition. His doppelganger stood at the edge of a wall, waiting for his pistol to finish its overheat cycle. A small group of Batarians crept up towards the wall from behind an outcropping of snow-covered rocks, clearly believing Shepard was too focused on his weapon’s functionality to notice them.  
  
          The group almost managed to get within a couple yards of Shepard when the then-lieutenant commander threw himself out of cover, lit by biotic aura. Without finesse or any apparent plan, he charged, howling, straight for the middle of the collective. One Batarian fell almost instantly when Shepard grabbed him by the face and discharged the psychokinetic energy into the enemy’s head. Blood leaking from his ears distracted the alien’s compatriots just long enough for Shepard to press his advantage; his combat knife buried itself in another’s chest on the immediate right, and his pistol fired into the neck of the one directly behind him.  
  
          The brutality of the assault repulsed Shepard as he watched himself from the outside. Even though he’d never been able to watch himself fight before, he could easily tell how little control his past self still held of his bloodlust and biotic power. Once the second-to-last of the enemies had crumpled from a trio of bullets, he stormed the remaining man and drove a knee into his gut. Not content with his enemy’s mere deterrence, Shepard grasped the back of the Batarian’s head and drove it towards the concrete with a biotically-assisted throw. The mass-effected upper body hit the pavement with greater velocity than would normally be possible, crushing his face so abruptly blood spattered a good half-meter from the impact site. The younger Shepard stalled to catch his breath. His silhouette was a portrait of unchecked aggression, arms bowed out to each side, each heave of his chest for air closer to guttural snarls rather than an involuntary function.  
  
          Both Shepards started at sounds around the corner. Pausing just long enough to extricate the knife from the third Batarian’s chest, the younger Shepard ran for the center of the base, brandishing his shotgun as he did so. A force of about twelve pirates had mustered in the fort’s courtyard, settling into cover as their now-dead allies distracted the human. Shepard shot one of them in the back as greeting.  
  
          “You bastards are gonna _pay for what you’ve done_.”

          From there, the memory began to fast-forward. Facsimile Shepard tore the squad apart, mostly with biotics so unstable, the more powerful attacks created secondary implosions that almost took what was left of the walls with them. His fighting was so vehement, so visceral, he could almost fool himself into thinking he was just watching Jack exacting her revenge on Purgatory over again.  
  
          But no, this was his supposed career peak, at least before Saren. What had earned him the Star of Terra. The example every CO in basic training cited when breaking in recruits. _War hero_ , they called him.  
  
          All he could hear was his past self’s chanting inner monologue: _Kill. Kill. Never enough. Make them pay._ He knew damned well his actions that day were no more than petty revenge for Mindoir. Mass murder poorly disguised and excused as divine retribution. Being the single-handed savior of the colony had meant there were no witnesses to his carnage – at least, none the Alliance would have ever believed. Military brass had let him go home – back to Mindoir – for a few weeks after all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the receipt of his medal. As time had peeled excuses and distractions away, he became horrified with himself. To see it first-hand now, as any other sapient creature would, renewed his shame a hundred fold.  
  
          Apparently the thought of what had come afterward piqued the interest of whoever was watching, because the ground bottomed out under Shepard and dropped him into a darkened room. Insects and creaking steel combined harmonies. The smell of meadow grass triggered his full recognition, driving him towards panic. Indeed, he had returned to Mindoir, but six years later than the earlier memory. Two days after he had come back after the Blitz, as a matter of fact. He had a hell of a lot of memories he didn’t want to relive, but this one topped the list. Darkness prevented him from seeing very well, but nonetheless Shepard caught the outline of himself struggling in his sleep on a nearby bed.  
  
          The force controlling his retrospective journey, unsatisfied with being a passive observer, surged Shepard forward again and into his sleeping form’s mind. Instantly he found himself engulfed by a cavalcade of disorganized images and sounds, but all of them assembling a panorama of anguish. Screams punctuated an already deafening hum of gunfire and talking. He ran aimlessly in the meta-dreamscape, desperately searching for a way out, but swirling hazes of scenery and battle showed no opening or mercy. Four-eyed masks of death rushed past him, each a little more mutilated and horrific than the last. Pressure ground down on him, seemingly crushing him into a smaller and smaller space that would only end in his death –  
  
         Memory-Shepard shot awake. Still trapped inside and watching out from the eyes, real-Shepard could only share in his memory’s fear and cold sweat, tried though he did to control his reminiscing. He put his whole will into changing the memory, slowing it down, anything to avoid its continuance, but to no avail. Muffled shudders of tears could be heard.  
  
         “So many…I killed so many…I should feel better. _Why don’t I feel better_?”  
  
         He could feel the crescent-shaped lines from his nails cutting into his younger self’s scalp, the aching shakes wracking the body. Eventually he heard himself give a clipped wail into his hands.  
  
         “I lost my _family_ because of them. Those animals. They’d cage us all up and sell us to the lowest bidder in seconds if they had their way. Why should I give a fuck about _their_ lives?”


	3. Chapter 3

_You know why_ , Shepard thought, though his younger self would never hear him. The hands pulled away from the face briefly, then curled into fists. _Mom and dad never would have wanted this. No matter how violent or painful their fate, they wouldn’t have wanted their only son to give into genocidal rage for it._  
  
          Past-Shepard apparently arrived at the same understanding as he thought it, because he folded himself over and weaved his fingers together over the top of his head, accompanied by another round of sobs. Every decision, every action Shepard had taken over those six years after his parents’ deaths had been for the opportunity to take revenge, to make them matter…whatever it took. Only that night did he realize how high the price turned out to be, and he couldn’t pay it. The eyes glanced over to the bedside table, where his sidearm sat, as Shepard’s sense of safety had fled long before the Blitz. An image flashed through the mind – the briefest consideration of escape, cessation of his loneliness and dejection. Soon as it came, the thought was banished by even greater shame that coalesced into a single, black pit of emotional gravity.  
  
          And then, the surroundings were gone, and he was left drifting in endless space black as his disposition.   
  
 _I’ve been here so long…did I die? Again?_  
  
          As expected no one answered, though he was sure whoever was watching could perceive his question. He had been standing there a few moments when he heard distant shouting. Back and forth, he searched the empty expanse with nothing to show for it. The calls, however, were coming closer, and eventually sorted itself into a single word that made his heart expand to the point of bursting.  
  
          “Shepard?” It was Tali calling for him, closer now than ever before.  
  
          He spun around again, and there she was, maskless and smiling right in front of him. _It’s an illusion, you’re still stuck here_ , he tried to tell himself, but after what he had been forced to watch, there was no controlling his overwhelming compulsion to hold her.   
  
          “Tal,” he choked into her neck as they embraced. If she really could be here, wherever this was, what would she think of him? Would she understand? Would he ever get a chance to assuage his doubt? Tali pulled him away just enough to kiss him. At first it was chaste and sweet, but soon enough she pressed forward, deepening the passion she poured into it. He reciprocated in spite of himself, dangerously close to no longer caring where he was and how to escape it. As they set to tip over the precipice of mere overzealous PDA and into more explicit territory, something…changed. Instead of the warm, spice-like taste he associated kissing Tali with, the savor gained an unfamiliar brightness and sweetness. He pushed back and was floored to find Miranda wrapped around him, looking very pleased.  
  
         “What’s wrong, Shepard?” She breathed at his collarbone before teasing at the collar of his uniform with her teeth. He shoved harder, but it was as if she had been adhered to his skin.  
  
         “Pretty sure everything is wrong with this,” Shepard muttered. Much as he wanted out of the situation, everything below his neck was far more interested in continuing the tryst. Mind and body had become disconnected somehow, creating an extremely confusing mesh of libido and repulsion, with a growing hint of fear. Miranda peeled away from him and pushed him down onto his back for a better angle to continue her conquest.

         For all Miranda’s supposed perfection, Shepard was in reality vastly stronger than her, but that, evidentially, didn’t matter here. The earlier emotional manipulation returned, attempting to ratchet his previous desire back up as it had been with Tali. His pulse...and other things...skyrocketed. Miranda began busying herself with slipping her hands into his pants and removing them, teasing the jutting edge of his hipbone with her lips all the while. The widening disparity between his intellectual repugnance and physical lust stretched his not-insignificant fortitude to the point of sundering. If the Geth or the Reapers were looking for the best way to torture an organic, they had definitely found it.   
  
         “What the fuck do you _want_ with me?” he panted past Miranda’s draped ebony locks and up towards the unsympathetic void. Real panic began building in his spine, which combined with his lofty heart rate was sending him into a nauseating spiral of half-thought. Just as he thought his mental levees would burst, the scene froze over him. Miranda’s expression lost all impression of sexuality and gained a robotic emptiness even though she was still crouched above him. The fingers flipping switches and twiddling dials on his hormonal controls retreated, as if in consideration. Shepard took the opportunity to escape from grip of Miranda’s thighs, his breath coming in great gasps to level out his racing heart.  
  
         The woman still frozen on all fours in front of him regained her malleability and reformed itself into the shape of Tali once again. She crawled toward him suggestively, but he was far too shell-shocked from his experience just moments before to respond in any other way than to slide away from her as quickly as possible. Her image flickered briefly, and her voice stuttered as if it was a corrupted vid file.  
  
         “Wh-what did I-I do? Come he-e-e-re.”   
  
         He wasn’t having any part of it this time. Instead he stood, ready for whatever new emotional test was waiting for him. His skin tingled; something was happening on his audience’s side, giving the space Shepard was occupying a sense of desperation. Dismay struck deep in his chest. Again in vain Shepard searched for any miniscule chance of escape. From behind he heard the sickening crunch of cracking bone. He turned to see a banshee, one of her arms raised at a forty-five degree angle and, speared upon it, was Tali.   
  
         The talons had entered from her back, so she was facing Shepard, arms opened slightly at her sides and twitching. Without her helmet, her contorted expression burned itself into his mind. Pointlessly her mouth gibbered for a breath that could never be taken. Her eyes’ muted illumination briefly intensified with misery as the appendage made its way back out the way it had come, dropping the Quarian to the ground. Screeching cackles echoed in the infinite space from the banshee as she stepped back to admire her destruction. Over and over he told himself _it’s not real, it’s not real_ , but logic could make no lasting impression. He threw himself to Tali’s side and slipped a hand under her shoulder blades to lift her up. Her eyes had lost all their usual luminescence and faded to a milky gray. Blood trailed along and across the delicate, curving lines decorating her throat. Even in death, her forehead remained creased by her last seconds of torment, jarring the darker strokes of color running down from her scalp. One of Shepard’s thumbs traced along the edge of her jawline, smearing the blood that had accumulated there as he did so. He dropped his forehead down onto hers, straining to control himself.


	4. Chapter 4

          “Not real,” he tried again, hoping that maybe, if he said it out loud this time, that would break the illusion, or perhaps mend his shattered heart. The banshee yowled, her cries, like Tali’s words earlier, choppy and edged with static. Unperturbed, she ambled forward. Blue haze lit the air above him, and he could feel the kinetic energy of charging biotics, but he paid it little mind. It didn’t matter.   
  
          The light – all of it – died. In the dark, all Shepard could perceive was a total loss of gravity; Tali’s body drifted up and away from him, and he quickly lost track of her as his own weight disappeared. Pressure came down over his whole body, like an extra layer of skin, and he realized he was in his armor again. A hissing noise at the back of his head made his heart drop like lead. Tiny, yet excruciating pricks of shrapnel all across his body joined the sensations. A horizon drew itself out along Shepard’s field of vision, obscured off to his right by the silhouette of the fractured Normandy. It was cold, and growing more frigid by the second. More terrifying than anything, however, was the continued hiss of a popped suit seal. All he could hear was his own, frantic breathing as it shallowed in each attempt. His hands grasped clumsily at the back of his head, but his joints were already aching from the piercing rime of space. The only thing left to him and his last breath was one, last, agonized cry no one would ever hear.  
  
          The same scream reverberated tenfold in the confined cylinder, given a rhythm by his mindlessly pounding fists against the glass of the virtualization machine. Slowly, the enclosure parted again, and Shepard dropped on all fours just outside of it. Shouts and hands enveloped him, but only added to his confusion. Returning to corporeal form twisted his organs into knots, so he drove his forehead into the soothingly cool alloyed floor beneath him in attempt to quell his nausea.   
  
          “Shepard, are you hurt?” Garrus’ words were the first he managed to sort into an understandable sentence. Tali, however, was incomprehensible to him, but her words were pointed like daggers and carried the unmistakable Russian-like accent of Khelish. His translator was obviously working, but whatever she was saying was not in the database, and wasn’t anything he had learned from his quick-and-dirty crash course software in Quarian language he’d downloaded back before the two had gotten together.  
  
          “ _Answer me_ , Legion.” Shepard heard her shotgun’s safety shut off. Despite still being incredibly dizzy, he pulled himself together enough to rise to a kneeling position in order to wrap a hand around her left wrist.  
  
          “Tali, it’s fine. It’s not Legion’s fault.” Her steadfast aim on Legion softened, and she relaxed enough to turn her attention down to Shepard. His gaze locked on the two faintly-visible pinpricks of light visible through her visor. The world around him settled under him much more solidly just seeing her alive and well, pulse in her wrist beating steadily under his fingers. Again the compulsion to embrace her threatened to overwhelm, but here he had to be on task, be The Commander, especially since the rest of the Admiralty Board were monitoring this whole exchange in some method or another. So, he consoled himself by tightening his hold on her wrist to re-anchor himself.  
  
          Legion, unperturbed by Tali’s obvious rage, also angled his headlamp down to address the commander.  
  
          “That is inaccurate, Shepard-Commander. We did not operate at optimal capacity, therefore putting the mission, and you, at great risk. That it took us a whole seventeen point three-eight seconds to rescue you is an even greater failure. We apologize.”  
  
          “Twenty seconds…?” Shepard murmured incredulously.

          “Yes. Legion told us something was wrong, and then right before you came out, you started…” Tali’s hand began to drift down towards his stubbled chin, but she, too, remembered herself and where she was just soon enough to just drop it to her side semi-naturally.   
  
          Shepard rocked back down to a seated position on the floor and pressed his fingers to his temples in a pointless attempt to soothe a searing headache. Each firing of a neuron in his head felt as though it was burning brain tissue with its intensity. Mechanical whirrs off to his left made him jump; Garrus swore and took up a defensive position with Tali in front of the commander. Dozens of Geth Primes emerged from behind pillars to surround them. Legion, however, waved his organic friends down and explained how the Primes were now liberated and fully-committed to Shepard’s cause. He took their offer to head to the battlefront with a clipped, but grateful thanks.  
  
          “You should head back to the Normandy and get checked out.”  
  
          “I told you, it’s fine, Garrus.” Shepard moved to stand, but nearly fell back down again if not for Tali and Garrus’ quick arrival on either side of him. Heedless of her surroundings, Tali snaked a hand around the back of his neck, her thumb rubbing small circles into his spine when Shepard squinted his eyes against his renewed lightheadedness. Her death mask from his hallucination flickered in his head. Involuntary fear and grief lanced his chest so forcefully he gasped.  
  
          “What is it?”  
  
          “Just a headache.” He opened an eye to look at her when she huffed disbelievingly. “Really.”  
  
          They made their way back slowly at first, but Shepard regained most of his faculties by the time they made it to the LZ. He didn’t want to concern Cortez by having someone else hail the shuttle, so he waved off Garrus’ magnanimous offer to do so when he asked. Each of his squadmates hovered closer to him than usual, but was thankfully silent for the first few minutes.  
  
          “Shepard-Commander,” Legion prompted.  
  
          “Yeah?”  
  
          “We wish to apologize.”  
  
          “You already did.”  
  
  
          “No, not for this terminal’s failure, but for the Geth. The runtimes that gained access to you did not intend to cause outright harm, though the probability of you believing so is almost certain.”  
  
          “Look, Legion, I’m not going to condemn your whole race because some Reaper-assisted members of your race were looking to-” Shepard paused on the first syllable of ‘torture me,’ knowing instinctively neither Garrus nor Tali would be amenable to such a description.  
  
          Legion pressed his advantage against Shepard’s hesitance. “Geth wish to understand organics. Their actions were not driven directly by the Reapers. The opportunity to perform data mines on an organic mind in order to appreciate seemingly contradictory priorities and social hierarchies was too great to discard. Communications during intrusion prove so. You also have no reason to worry that your memories will be released from our servers. We managed to ensure the local copy being compiled did not transfer off-planet.”  
  
          Shepard stiffened. “You…saw?”  
  
          “Of course. Following server transfers and commands was required to rescue you. If you are concerned with our judgment of your actions at-” Shepard swung around to face Legion.  
  
          “Don’t.” The plates surrounding Legion’s headlamp shifted up and down in what the commander assumed was confusion, but the Geth said nothing more. Legion’s witness to what had happened made his experience so much more real…every agonizing moment of it. Garrus and Tali were sharing looks, but Shepard was in no mood to elaborate further.  
  
          “Shepard,” Legion prefaced once again.  
  
          “ _What?_ ”  
  
          “You are clearly attempting to maintain a semblance of normalcy for the sake of squad integrity and morale, but standard organic counseling operations, regardless of species, is very clear. When faced with emotional trauma, relating your experience to another organic without fear of judgment is the most efficient course of action that prevents further withdrawal and depression.”  
  
         Never had he wanted to put his fist through a Geth more than that moment.


	5. Chapter 5

          Tali’s hand caught Shepard’s own, twitching one before he could do anything he would almost certainly later regret. He turned his head towards her to supposedly say something, but was unwilling or unable to articulate it. His expression was unlike anything she’d seen from him before, save for the shortest possible moment on Virmire, when he’d told Ashley to stay behind to die; he looked lost and heartbroken, eyes no more than clouded pools stilled by troubled reminiscence. Unlike three years ago, it didn’t pass in a split-second – this time it remained carved into him, as if he no longer had the resolution to keep going. Her heart’s sympathetic throb warred with a paralyzing fear in her gut at the unbidden suggestion he was on the verge of giving up. He finally seemed to notice how much emotion he was projecting, as he straightened abruptly before turning away. She stifled her apprehension when she caught Legion leaning forward as if to say something further, and cut him off.  
  
          “Legion, I understand you’re just trying to help, but people don’t generally like to be called out on their emotions like that,” she tried, desperate to shore up the collapsing situation. Despite their rocky beginnings, she had grown to legitimately like Legion, and preferred if his head wasn't crushed a blue cloud of biotic death. The shuttle came over a ridge and began settling down before them. Legion’s head bobbed to the left in consideration of Tali’s words and, thank the ancestors, chose to let whatever he was going to say alone. Together they boarded the shuttle. Steve looked over his shoulder and smiled in greeting, but no one returned it, Shepard being too consumed with keeping himself together to even notice the pilot, and the others too afraid to set off the commander by speaking. He took up his customary position at the door to the shuttle’s cockpit, grasping the bar on the ceiling so tightly Tali could just catch a few high notes of the steel’s complaint over the hum of the engines. As she took her seat in the back, a small notification light blinked in the interior of her visor.  
  
         “We wish to make a request of you,” Legion’s voice trickled in on a private frequency directly to her helmet. Before answering, she triple-checked her settings to make sure the external speakers were turned off.  
  
         “Yes?”  
  
         “After review of the situation, we have determined you are the optimal candidate to speak with the Commander greater detail.” Her brow tightened with worry intense enough to churn her stomach into itself. “You’re really concerned about this.”  
  
         Legion didn’t respond for several tense seconds. “Yes. We have determined that the Commander’s natural reluctance to reveal his personal feelings can be bypassed only by your unique skill set.”  
  
         “Skill set?”  
  
         “Data suggests you, Creator Tali’Zorah, are the only entity of comparable motivation to Shepard-Commander besides destruction of the Reapers. We believe such a prioritization is a manifestation of the organic simile referred to as ‘love’. Hormonal and other biological data also supports this hypothesis. Thus, we hope you would be willing to assist.”

         How could she be so shocked? Shepard had been the one to reinitiate their relationship when they were reunited just a few days before, and he’d clearly been sincere. However, they also hadn’t had the opportunity to discuss the matter in any real detail since then. Time had never been on their side, really – the time they had spent together, both before the Collector base mission and now, was more a cathartic exercise to release mutual attraction than an established coupling. But here, in the Perseus Veil, at war and with the greater galaxy falling to ruination, the idea that the Commander would even consider devoting himself to her reignited her feelings of selfishness and insecurity she’d held when he’d first approached her. Legion couldn’t be right.  
  
         “Will you assist? Or have we made a miscalculation?”  
  
        _Tali, if you’re scared, I don’t blame you. But I don’t want anyone else. I want you. And I’ll do whatever I have to, to make this work._  
  
         Selfishness was in the eye of the beholder, perhaps, but letting Shepard slip away and into despair was outright abandonment, and a far greater sin. He had put everything on the line, for the galaxy, and for her. He couldn’t do everything on his own all the time, though he did his damnedest. Regardless of the truth of Legion’s assessment, she couldn’t turn her back on him now.   
  
         “Of course. I’ll do what I can.”  
  
         “Acknowledged.”  
  
         The rest of the ride back to the Normandy passed without further incident besides a few confused glances back from Cortez. Shepard stormed off the shuttle without a word to anyone else. Tali let him go.  
  
         “We do not understand. Are you not going to speak to him?”   
  
         “What the hell are you talking about?” Garrus asked.  
  
         Tali sighed heavily as she tried to concoct a suitable explanation for her conversation with the Geth for Garrus, but soon gave up and addressed Legion instead.  
  
         “Yes, I will, in a bit. Give him some time to calm down a little.”  
  
         Legion nodded and trotted off, presumably to join Shepard in the war room for the debrief.  
  
         “I wouldn’t worry about Shepard too much. This isn’t anything new. Leaving Earth has been weighing pretty hard on him, and Tuchanka…” Garrus drifted off with a reflective mumble.  
  
         “What about Tuchanka?”  
  
         Garrus’ mandibles flailed in surprise, “You…I didn’t…Shepard should tell you,” he finished brokenly, and took off for the war room himself hastily.  
  
         The debrief with the Admirals was, indeed, brief. Just as he had been with the Geth planetside, Shepard was terse and gave minimally-syllabic answers. If the others were even somewhat aware of how the mission had gone down, they showed no sign. Afterwards, he disappeared once again, this time probably to his cabin, as there had been no plans to do anything more after their mission.   
  
         Truthfully, she had hoped he’d come to her first. It wasn’t as though she was overwhelmingly nervous about talking with him, she had simply hoped he’d at least show some inclination to open up on his own. When dinnertime passed and he hadn’t reappeared from his cabin, however, it had become clear he wasn’t going to do so, at all. In spite of herself, she was mildly irritated as she entered the elevator. While Legion’s insistence on intervention was certainly worrisome, she couldn’t understand what could have happened to shake Shepard so thoroughly. He never talked about his childhood, for obvious reasons, but she had heard him tell Ashley on one occasion he had ‘dealt with it’. Was there something else going on she didn’t know about? So much of the Commander’s life was public, it was difficult to imagine him being able to keep it a secret. Besides, surely he understood she would be nothing but sympathetic…right?  
  
         Speculation ended as the elevator confirmed its arrival with a beep. She took a deep breath and reminded herself to be prepared for anything when she opened the door.


End file.
